Additional Information

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Questions from faculty and students about a particular evaluation should be directed to the department, school, or college administrator. If you do not know who is responsible for administering the evaluations for your department, contact your department office.

Ways to Increase Response Rates

Online course evaluation response rates may be a bit lower than those of paper evaluations completed during class time, but don't let that stop you from switching to efficient and environmentally responsible online evaluations. Here are some tips to increase response rates with online surveys:

Update the text templates associated with the survey questionnaire every term to include current dates and accurate contact information for questions about evaluations. The default generic Class Climate Administrator closing is not a good contact, as OIT doesn't know the specific details and policy for each evaluation and won't be able to answer most participants' questions. The faster students get answers or directions, the more likely they will be to complete the evaluations.

Implement the reminder notice feature when generating surveys (tab 2 in Scheduled Tasks). Reminder emails will be sent to any students who have not completed the survey at the specific day increments that are set in the Scheduled Tasks (e.g. 2 days).

Implement the response rate notification feature when generating surveys (tab 3 in Scheduled Tasks). A response rate notification email to the instructor is triggered when the response rate in a class does not meet the threshold set in the Scheduled Tasks (e.g. 80%). This is a notice for the instructor to then remind students in class of the evaluation.

Provide students with an early reminder that evaluations are approaching, either in class or by email. If they know when to expect the survey invitation, they will be looking for it in their inboxes and will be less likely to disregard it as spam.

Offer an incentive to students whose classes attain a desirable response rate (e.g. 5 bonus points for all students in the class if evaluation gets 90% completion rate).

Make it an assignment in class, even if no points are attributed. If it is in the syllabus, then students are aware of the expectation that they complete it and are less likely to forget about it.

Explain (briefly) in the evaluation invitation email that student evaluations are taken seriously. Give an example of how feedback provided by students has been implemented in your department, school or college.

Ask instructors to stress the importance of evaluations by explaining how the university uses student feedback collected through evaluations, as well as how they personally use evaluation feedback. Again, give real life examples of how student feedback has influenced the course content, policy, or format, or otherwise affected the department, school or college.